By Bob Van Leer

  (PRUDHOE BAY, ALASKA, Wednesday, July 30, 1997) - Production at the giant Prudhoe Bay oilfield is now declining, but production from eight smaller oil fields is making up the difference now on Alaska's North Slope.

  The Prudhoe Bay field is the largest oil field in North America and the 18th largest ever discovered worldwide.

  The 48-inch diameter Trans Alaska Pipeline was built to move the oil to market, the largest private construction project anywhere. Prudhoe Bay came on stream in 1977 and produced more than 1.5 million barrels of oil and gas liquid per day for more than a decade. Production started to decline in 1988 but was still producing 1.2 million barrels per day in 1995, the most recent figures we have.

   Costs of development are monumental. The field was developed jointly by Arco and British Petroleum (BP). An Arco spokeswoman said more than $25 billion has been invested in developing the field and transportation system. The pipeline was originally projected to have a 20-year life. It has been in use for 20 years and is now projected to be in use until 2030.

  Estimated recovery under conventional techniques is 12 billion barrels and nine billion barrels have already been produced. But don't expect production to end soon.

GAS PIPELINE?

  Other fields are producing and sending oil down the pipeline and there is a proposal to build an $11 billion pipeline for gas down the pipeline corridor to export gas. Gas is currently produced with oil and reinjected into the field. An estimated 26 trillion cubic feet of gas is available. The North Slope continues to provide about 25% of domestic U.S. production.

MIDNIGHT SUN

  Prudhoe Bay is about 250 miles north of the Arctic Circle and at 11:00 p.m. the sun has still not set. The North Slope doesn't slope much. Our guide said the slope is about 10 feet per mile for 60 miles from the Arctic Ocean.

  After arriving at the Deadhorse airport, we checked into the Arctic Caribou Inn. A one and two-story complex built of single-wide mobile home modules.

  The whole Prudhoe Bay complex, which includes Deadhorse, won't win any architectural prizes. It is strictly functional, built mostly of elements barged in during the short summer. We flew here from Fairbanks, but had to go back to Anchorage first to catch the final hour and a half flight to Prudhoe Bay.

  The flight in crossed the Yukon River, the third largest in the U.S. Glen Woolridge, Rogue River pioneer, once led a party down the Yukon. From the air it would appear that a big problem would be finding the correct channel. The river winds all over and has multiple channels.

  The last part of the flight was over the Brooks Range with bare mountains up to 9000 feet high.

  After an excellent meal we were taken on a tour of the facility. Heavy equipment is all over the area, some on tracks and others with huge soft flotation tires.

  There are no accurate population figures, but Arco and BP employ 1500. Workers are paid well, but have difficult conditions to work under. The temperature ranges from 83 degrees in the summer to minus 68 degrees in winter. Workers live in company housing and eat in company dining rooms. Arco's main facility was like a small town, comfortable, but also built of mobile modules.

  Workers work two weeks on and two weeks off. The spokeswoman said the company has its own airline and provides transportation to and from Anchorage. She said workers live all over the world and commute to Anchorage for their two week shifts. Pay scales start at $10.00 per hour but average $25.00-30.00 and year-round pay is in the $70,000 range.

  We were driven to the Beaufort Sea, which is part of the Arctic Ocean. The ocean is not deep here and suitable only for barge transportation in the limited summer.

  The Arco facility is sprawled over a wide area with untouched tundra between installations. Everything permanent, including roads, has to be built on pads of gravel three to five feet thick. Fortunately, a lot of gravel is available. At a huge gravel pit we saw a brown bear and her two cubs coming down for a drink.

LOTS OF WILDLIFE

  In the open areas between oil installations we also saw several caribou and lots of white swans, Canadian geese and assorted ducks. We saw more wildlife per square foot in the middle of Arco's oil installation than we did in Denali National Park. We were told the local caribou herd has increased from 3000 to 20,000 since oil work began.

  The footprint of oil installation development is small with multiple wells drilled from one pad. We have been in other oil fields and this one is remarkable clean. Typically, in oil fields there is crude oil spilled here and there, but we could detect none here.

  We went to Pump Station 1, Mile Zero, of the pipeline for a look. A small hole has been cut in the bottom of the insulation on the pipeline and we could reach inside and feel the temperature of the oil heading south for its six-day journey to Valdez. We were told here the oil temperature is about 120 degrees and that felt about right in the pipe.

  Tomorrow we are going to head south on a bus along the pipeline road with our first night's destination the community of Coldfoot.